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nd econonlic
geography have been important to understanding the distinctive relations
between media, culture and space constructed within and through global
media, and in this section the two will be considered together, even though in
an andytical sense recent work from economic geographers will inform the
analysis of media gl'obalization developed in Chapters 3 and 4, and the significance
of cultural geography perspectives will emerge primarily in Chapter 5.
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There are two major 'turns' in geography that have been important to
understanding the context of contemporary debates. The first, which occurred
in the 1970s and is largely contemporaneous with the rise of Marxist political
economy and critical theory more broadly, is the critique of positivism and the
idea of geography as 'the science of the spatial' (Massey, 1985, p. 11). The
observation that spatial relations were spatial relations z~lzderc apitalism, and
the resultant need to incorporate elements of the Marxist critique of capitalism
- with its focus upon the dynamics of capital accumulation, the social
division of labour, uneven development, and class inequality, antagonism and
contradiction - generated an enormously productive moment in radical geography
(see for example, Castells, 1978; Harvey, 1982; Massey, 1984; Storper
and Walker, 1989; Smith, 1990). At the same time, a question that lurked
around the finding that spatial relations were formed by broader social relations
was whether geography mattered or whether, as Doreen Massey
observed, 'geography only comes onto the scene at a later stage of analysis -
that it is inherently contingent' (Massey, 1985, p. 18). \Vhile radical geographers
such as Harvey (1982, 1985), Storper and Walker (1989) and Smith
(1990) had sought to reconstruct political economy in explicitly spatial terms
- most notably in Harvey's (1982, 1985) identification of the 'spatial fix' as a
central mechanism for capital to renew itself, along with technological innovation
- the question remained about the distinctive contribution of geography
to critical political economy. As Massey (1985, p. 18) observed, 'if we
really mean that it is impossible to conceptualise social processes and structures
outside their spatial form and spatial implications, then the latter must
also be incorporated into our initial formulations and definitions'. Similarly,
Soja (1989) argued that the impact of critical geography had been around the
reassertion of space in critical social theory.
The second major development in critical geography, which can be broadly
dated from the early 1990s onwards, is the 'cultural turn'. The new cultural
geography drew upon the post-structuralist critique of representation, proposing
that the symbols through which 'reality' is represented could not be taken
as straightforward and ideologically neutral reflections of social reality, but
were modes of signification that had their own material and ideological
effects, and were therefore imbued with, 'and embedded within, re